


The Night Haunter

by msjedimaster



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-13 00:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5687998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msjedimaster/pseuds/msjedimaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I suck at summary's so I'll just put my note here. </p><p>Curze was supposed to be the only primarch who had literally no one raise him.  I made up this story as an idea for him having someone for a little while. Someone that could have totally changed him. But through her death set him on the same path.</p><p>Yes, I’m terribly uncreative. And I can’t believe I wrote something that made me pity this jerkface. And no I refuse to buy that he was a born psychopath, that was something he became for many reasons. <s>Even if I do hate him, for what he did to Vulkan.</s></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Night Haunter

He couldn’t recall clearly how he had come to be in her care, only that she had found him some time after he had pulled himself from the capsule. He could however, recall her first soft words to him.

“Put the glass down son, I’m not going to hurt you.” He had always been able to detect, truth and lies merely by listening to the speaker. He knew she was being truthful and dropped the shard of glass he had been holding out as a weapon.

“What’s your name? Where are you Mum and Da? Did they just leave you out here?” She reached out a hand and gently took his. He was so young and was only wearing a very tattered tunic and pants held up by rope.

“I don’t have a name…I was just left here.” He mumbled slowly he wouldn’t look her in the eye. He had only picked up on speaking more recently as more scavengers had come and dug through the “trash dump” which he had been living in.

Stefany raised an eyebrow, the boy looked to be no older than three or four planetary rotations, but he spoke like a much older child. “Well then you are going to come and stay with me in my hab. I’ll take care of you. My name is Stefany, and we will need to decided a name for you.”

Stay? Hab? What did those words, even mean? He soon figured out what a home was. A dimly lit room with a small stove and several blankets neatly folded in a corner. Despite not likely the small structure he found he did like the warmth that it brought at night. Also no feral dogs would bother him inside this place.

“I’ll make you something to eat, then I will go and get you some clean clothes.” Stefany said, from a small cupboard she removed a plate and knife and a small loaf of bread. She cut him a large piece and then from a container in the back removed some dried meat.

Stefany placed the plate on the floor in front of the boy. “Afraid it isn’t much, but should…” She stopped speaking and laughed as the boy had already torn into the food. Laughing, what a strange sound. Stefany’s had been full of mirth and simple joy. The only laughs, he could recall hearing before where harsh and taunting, but where had he heard them?

“Stay here, I’ll be back soon.” She disappeared for some time.

Once he was finished with the food he explored the small hab. The room he was in was unexciting, just dirty white walls, a cupboard, the blankets he had seen earlier and stove. He noticed that there was another room: very small but it seemed important. It had a small ‘bowl’ with a hole on it and he found when he turned a handle water came out. He shut it off quickly. He also found what appeared to be a chair with a hole in it that smelled terribly, sand lastly he found a large metal ‘bowl’ like the other one he had found with handles that poured water the same. He went back into the room and covered himself with a blanket. It was so very soft and warm, he thought of sleeping right then and there. Before sleep could take him, however, Stefany came back.

“Son, gotchua something to wear here. But first you will need to bathe, I’ll help you with that.” She leads him back into the other room and filled the bigger 'bowl’ with water. “You’ll need to get in the tub, and we will get you scrubbed up.” He nodded slowly removing his clothes he stepped into the tub the warm water, stopping at his belly.

She scrubbed the dirt off him with an old rag and some soap and wrapped him in a towel and had him sit in front of her small stove to warm as she unwrapped his clothes.  
They were black as his eyes, he marveled how new and clean they were. As she helped him into them, then she combed out his matted black hair.

“There, you look so handsome.” She smiled happily for a moment before it slipped. “Are you sure you don’t have a Mum or a Da or anyone looking for you?” She said slowly.

“No, I have no one.” He felt a pain in his brow. He pictured a face through a glass that spoke to him and called him a name he couldn’t remember. He shook his head and focused on Stefany again.

“You are wrong little one, you have me.” She wrapped her arms around him, he didn’t know what she was doing was called a hug. But he returned the gesture, he could still remember how warm she was, how safe she made him feel in that moment and in that short year he had been with her.

“Karlos, I’ll call you Karlos.” She said smiling down at him. Life settled into a routine, he found that Stefany spent almost all day every day at a place called work. It was a big-dingy-dirty place with someone Stefany called boss-man who yelled at everyone if they did not put together the parts of the machines Stefany helped make fast enough.

Well she was there, he would sneak out and explore the city. He found places with large lovely hab’s with more food than anyone could ever eat in a day. He often wished he could take Stefany to one of these places and they could live there. But he learned much from Stefany. Those places cost more money than she would could ever make to live in. So he contented himself with their small hab. But still he explored and memorized the city, from it’s mansions to it’s over filled ghettos.

Stefany would come home in the evening with a little money in her pocket and the two would go through the shabby lower city and buy a little food for the next day. They would eat a small meal and talk for a long while about many things in the world or Stefany would tell him a funny story about the boss-man. Then he would go out and explore a bit longer as Stefany rested in front of the oven wrapped in blankets.

After several months he was surprised one day when Stefany returned home with what she had called a mattress to sleep on. It was much warmer and softer than the floor. The two would share it comfortably.

He began to grow rather quickly. Stefany found it odd, but she had said she hadn’t been around enough boys to know what they should grow like. She bought him clothes that were several sizes too big and he would quickly grow into them.

She merely laughed and would say “My little Karlos will be a man before I know it. A good strong man.” His last night with her remembered clearly, she had run a hand through his hair and sang him the only song she knew by heart. The same song she sang to him every night before sleep.

_Rest tired eyes a while_  
Sweet is thy baby’s smile  
Angels are guarding and they watch o’er thee  
Sleep, sleep, my sweetheart  
Here on you mamma’s knee  
Angels are guarding  
And they watch o’er thee  
The birdeens sing a fluting song  
They sing to thee the whole day long  
Wee fairies dance o’er hill and dale  
For very love of thee Dream, Dream, my sweetheart. 

That day was like any other, only rather than coming home to meet Stefany after work as he did most days. He had stayed out exploring the streets and returned home after dark. Expecting Stefany to be waiting for him and some small chastisement from her for being tardy he pushed open the door.

There was a trail of blood across the room to where his beloved Stefany sat propped up against a wall. Her breaths were fast and shallow, blood clung to her face and her eyes opened as he closed the door.

“Karlos…” She croaked. He moved quickly and nestled himself beside her, tears stinging down his cheeks as she spoke again. “Karlos, my money is behind the bread…take it and get as far away from here as you can. The Baristalan’s will be back once they here you were here…they came for you…they wanted to sell you…” She groaned loudly and clutched at a wound on her belly that was oozing blood.

“No Stefany, I have to save you.” Karlos said in between sobs. “I’ll find a hospitlar that will come out here and care for you…” She cut him off.

“No, Karlos. No one will help me for fear of the Baristalan brother’s. You must hide, until they forget about you and then you…” Stefany coughed up blood and gasped for air. “Karlos…” She mumbled gagging on her blood. “Go.” She let out one last cough and she stopped breathing.

Karlos hugged her sobs shaking his body. After a time he stopped, and wrapped her in the warmest blanket.

_She looks like she is only sleeping now._

Then he took what little he could carry and ran. He would hide, until the time came that he could make the Baristalan’s pay for what they had done.

It took almost a week before the chance came to kill them. Those brother’s had been the first murder’s he had ever committed, but far from the last. He had stabbed them just as they had stabbed Stefany cut them just as she had been cut. And over the years he found a painful truth. The Stefany’s of the world where one in a trillion.

The rest of humanity would never show kindness or be truthful to another without some sort of gain to them or compensation for the service. So he slowly tore apart the world, he made the rules so strict that none dare cross them. He the “Night Haunter” enforced those rules with a singular punishment. Death. It was better this way he reasoned. Had there been these rules Stefany would still be alive.


End file.
